


Information Loss Paradox

by wehdile



Category: No Straight Roads (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Freeform, Gen, Mentions of Mental Illness, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, headcanons galore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:34:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27105037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wehdile/pseuds/wehdile
Summary: A summarized life of DJ Subatomic Supernova.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 67





	Information Loss Paradox

You are 5. Another doctor’s visit, another series of test viewed from behind the tinted visor of your space helmet. You have to wear it and you know precisely why although your parents think you a clueless tot. Danger lurks within your own body, a dense neuron star collapse after birth to form a singularity that could kill everyone in this room if unleashed.

Nightmares plague you of rending your parents, your siblings into strands of noodles from the gravitational waves. You really should not have stolen that book on space from the library, but you had to know. You have to know.

You are 14. Another birthday, another helmet to fit your lengthening body. You’ve mastered concentration to the point where you can remove it in short burst and do so now, setting the old one on the kitchen table, dented and faded from scuffles and sun. Colors appear so much more vibrant without the tint of visor and you stand to admire the flowers outside the window, meticulously cultivated by your father.

He looks at you now, a twinkle of pride in the craters of his moon head. Pride swells in your chest, painful in how you tamp it down lest the swell weaken the glass of your head. You put the new helmet on and fall into his hug, stiff and professional.

You are 17. As expected, your marks are spectacular, outstanding. You are at the top of your class, able to pick from a multitude of scholarships at your leisure. There is an unspoken plea in talk over dinner of which you will attend, hints toward the right path of avoiding the embarrassment of working a blue-collar job like your sister Alya.

You think your sister is perfectly well off, happy when she calls for the holidays to tell everyone about how well her kennel is doing, how happy her dogs are to pull sleds. How happy she is to be alone with her own thoughts. You are not alone with your thoughts, but your thoughts, aren’t particularly important when you have a mountain to climb.

You climb.

You are 21. Your first paper on black hole informational loss paradox is published in a prestigious astrophysics journal, the best in the country. You parents are so proud. They hang a copy in the living room besides your portrait and you cannot help feeling its presence; a momentous flash of a nebula leaping from the cradle into stardom.

This is it. Recognition of your brilliance. Your hands ache.

You are 25. You are a tenured professor during a time of economic unrest at an internationally renowned university. You are lucky to have a job at all with conscription lurking about every corner.

You have never been more unhappy.

You are 32. You quit, suddenly and without explanation. Your resignation letter is two words, not counting your signature or letterhead. You move back home. Disappointment hangs thick in the air, fogging your sharp mind with the weight of shattered expectations. That framed publication, once a light, now a blemish on your life. You can't bring yourself to throw it out so there it sits, a mocking blemish of what you once were.

For the seventh night in a row you ascend to the roof to listen to the gravity of distant stars.

You are 37. Your apartment in Vinyl City is your only refuge, the sky light, and your loft bed an escape from the hustle of city streets. You are reeling from your audition, unbelieving that you _passed_ even though, of course, there was never any doubt.

You roll over and press your head into the pillow, exhaling slowly. While you do not enjoy the idea of being under anyone's thumb, NSR is merely a step on your way to the peak.

You fall asleep under the stars, your only allies.

  


You are 41. Stars spin wildly around you, the epicenter of your own small universe. Something is leaking dazzling blobs of nebulae specked fluids around you, forming into perfect spheres in the vacuum. Spheres upon spheres upon spheres. Your head? Most likely. It hurts, a dull ache of wounded pride upon shattered paradigms.

They fall into orbit around you, orderly in their arrangement. Eventually you will have to return to Vinyl City in a 'controlled decent' (read: crash) but for now you are a satellite twice over.

It’s all you’re good for now.


End file.
